Wild Beasts, 1984

Wild Beasts, also known as Savage Beasts or Belve Feroci, opens with a quote from Francis Thrive, "Our madness engulfs everything and infects innocent victims such as children or animals." I like this quote, and it captures the maddening plot of Wild Beasts perfectly. That's probably because the director of the film, Franco Prosperi, wrote the quote himself (Choi, 2014). Franco is an Italian version of Francis, and Prosperi is Italian for thrive. This tips off the audience from the get-go that this film is going to be strange. In truth, being a mondo-style, 80s Italian exploitation film, where all rules are thrown to the tigers, Wild Beasts is really just a collection of nonsensical, offensive moments that are too cringeworthy to be funny or enjoyable to watch. I almost turned it off after the first ten minutes where there are long shots of a zookeeper chopping up real horse heads and feeding them to some lions. The plot of the film is simple: PCP leaks into the water supply, and after animals trapped in a zoo drink it, they become insane, taking revenge on their human captors.

Wild Beasts is most infamous for its abuse of real animals, being placed among the ranks of films like Cannibal Holocaust, Island of Lost Souls, and The Mountain of the Cannibal God, among many others (Buck, 2018). As both an animal-liberation activist and someone who opposes censorship in film, I'm of the opinion that it's okay to show whatever one wants to in film. However, it's wrong to film real-life violence that's curated for the purposes of the film. An example would be Lars Von Trier's most recent film The House that Jack Built where a duckling gets their leg torn off with pliers. Von Trier created this scene with silicone and movie magic (Billson, 2018). While this still might make the toughest horror fans queasy, no harm was done, which makes it acceptable in a larger conversation about censorship. In contrast, Wild Beasts features such real-life abuses as rats getting burned alive with a flame thrower and mountain lions let loose to attack cows. It's truly unacceptable and loathsome.

Something I do think this film accomplishes, definitely in the wrong way, is pointing out the absurdity and cruelty in using nonhuman-animals for the purposes of human-animal entertainment. While we don't see the level of animal exploitation of films like Cannibal Holocaust and Wild Beasts today, we are still using real animals in film and in other industries for the primary purpose of entertainment--even when we have the technology not to, kudos to this year's The Call of the Wild! Nonhuman animals, like all living creatures, exist for their own purposes, and their lives have meaning independent of the human experience. It is extremely arrogant of us humans to believe that animals are for us, believe that we can do what we want to them, and to believe that we can manipulate their lives so profoundly for human-centric reasons.

Zoos are the quintessential example of this, as portrayed in the film. We either capture animals in the wild or breed them in captivity, then force them to live out their lives in bondage for our own entertainment (ALDF, 2018). Most people cite reasons of education or family fun for why they continue to visit zoos. However, there is a plethora of educational materials already around to teach us about animals. If zoos were good at teaching us about animals, there would be far less exploitation and needless killing of them. Instead, the amount of habitat destruction and animal death has only increased over time (Ritchie and Roser, 2019). Alternatively, if your family is looking for a fun activity and to learn about animals in a meaningful way, here are a few suggestions: visit an animal sanctuary, volunteer at an animal shelter, watch documentaries or educational videos, or go on a hike and observe nature. Let's take the words of the very real Francis Thrive into consideration and not let our own madness "engulf everything and infect innocent victims such as children or animals."

References

ALDF. “Captive Animals - Most States Have No Laws Governing Captive Wild Animals.” Animal Legal Defense Fund, 9 Dec. 2018, aldf.org/focus_area/captive-animals/.

Billson, Anne. “Chicken Decapitation and Battered Cats: Hollywood's History of Animal Cruelty.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 24 May 2018, www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/24/chicken-decapitation-battered-cats-hollywood-animal-cruelty.

Buck, Douglas. “Wild Beasts (Franco Prosperi, 1984).” Offscreen, 24 Feb. 2018, offscreen.com/view/wild-beasts-franco-prosperi.

Choi, Annie. “Wild Beasts (1984).” BLEEDING SKULL!, 2 July 2014, bleedingskull.com/wild-beasts-1984/.

Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. “Meat and Dairy Production.” Our World in Data, Nov. 2019, ourworldindata.org/meat-production.